So, stick around here on my WordPress site — WordPress who on top of a powerful user community has actual real people answering support questions — or you can follow me on Twitter.

The sector has devoted great resources to tilting all playing fields in its direction. Consumers are taken advantage of; consumer protection is vehemently opposed. And great risks are taken, with the downside handed off to the government (and the consumers again, as taxpayers).

I hereby propose that any company whose shareholder ownership exceeds the non-stock assets/income should be hyper-regulated. I’m no economist, but (other than outright theft or fraud, i.e. Enron or Madoff) it looks like the major failures of businesses that impact consumers (or causes the government stepping in to save consumers) are based on the idea of “increasing shareholder value”. Legalized gambling on Wall Street is too big to shut down altogether, but it needs to be restricted from impacting the people who can’t afford to play it or be damaged by it.

For me, this is about the health care industry, too…if you didn’t catch that subtle undertone…and the real estate debacle.

MRBLACK wants you to be upset about the remake, and he refuses to support it in any fashion (beyond inflammatory blog posts which will only drive more interest in the film…) You can’t expect American audiences to suddenly become hyper-cinema-literate and start watching foreign genre films. If the remake is notable (whether it is extremely good or bad) it will attract attention to the original, just like the American remake of Japanese horror films (like The Ring) caused a rush at Blockbuster for the originals. An American remake also puts money into the pocket of the foreign studio (and writer) who owns the rights to LtROI so they can go make another great film.

Hold your judgment on the U.S. remake of LtROI until there are more details. Until then, use this opportunity to encourage the less informed to rent the movie from NetFlix. (Tell them how easy it is to stream it!)

p.s. I may just be arguing the point to argue, but MRBLACK’s attitude rubbed me wrong.

At first, this was just about trying to get the new iPhone. I figured I would get one for me and give my wife my “old” one (that just came back new/refurb from the Genius bar two months ago). I’m willing to spend a little cash to do this, and it would give AT&T the chance to charge me another $30/month since we’d be adding an additional iPhone to our plan. I guessed it would benefit them to cut me a deal, but I’ve been rebuffed multiple times and told that I would have to pay $200 more per phone than the deal they are giving new customers.

So, I started doing the math, looking at many options including selling my current iPhone (which goes for an amazingly good price on eBay) and it turns out I could actually “make” money switching to T-Mobile, getting both of us the Google phone. (I could probably even take the money I’m “making” and buy the new T-Mobile phone when it’s released in the coming months.) Take a look at this:

Looking at that savings and thinking about the increased cost to upgrade Becky and I to new iPhones (over $400), plus the extra monthly cost, makes me angry enough to consider canceling my AT&T U-Verse package, too. …I should start seeing how much I could save by doing that.

f AT&T.

I feel more than a little empathy for Mr Trainer’s name making it onto the interwebs since it isn’t difficult to find a person’s address these days. I won’t tell you which house it is specifically, but Scott lives inside this graphic:

In case you were wondering, this decibel level compare chart shows that the city’s 75dB limit on restaurants is just above normal conversation tones, and below telephone dial tone.

I tend to find the middle ground in most arguments, so I understand the people who legitimately are upset when a nearby restaurant expands to an outdoor patio and wants to have bands play in the evening. However many “restaurants” that have been playing live music for, at least, the seventeen years that I have lived in Austin are starting to be ticketed and even forced to stop active shows. Locals want to decry carpetbaggers who move into quaint parts of town, removing local color, but I suspect there are also several long-time residents who are using the police to punish popular businesses that have done a poor job of crowd control. (How would you feel if the only open parking on your block was your driveway, and it was often half-blocked by shiny new hybrid?)

Whatever the case, the Mayor and City Council need to quickly resolve these issues. My recommendation would be to establish grandfather exemptions for locations (streets, neighborhoods or specific businesses) that are established live music venues (including restaurants), and allow them to be louder for specific windows. For example, give Shady Grove a 20 decibel leniency until 10:00pm Wednesday and Thursday, and until 2:00am Friday and Saturday.

You can read more about the issues in Kevin Russell (of The Gourds)‘s letter to the Austin Chronicle, this discussion at Yelp, and this blog by Michael Corcoran’s.

Even better, you should DO SOMETHING to let the council know your opinion on the matter. I have written a letter that I’m sending to each of the upcoming council members, and the new mayor (who start their new jobs on June 20th) that I will link to below. If you feel ambitious, please print these out, fill in your name and mail them to City Hall at:

P. O. Box 1088
Austin, Texas 78767

My letters are available here:

• Lee Leffingwell
• Mike Martinez
• Randi Shade
• Laura Morrison
• Sheryl Cole
• Bill Spelman

• Chris Riley

Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer, journalist or even a very good researcher. Any legal matters discussed above are based on my scant online research, but I believe they are correct.

I don’t hold it against them, though. I’d just love to see my ideas implemented for a bigger audience, where I can use them too.

According to the readers of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, what is the best video store in Las Vegas? and what is the staff pick for best video store?

If you guessed Blockbuster for the first question then you have a good feeling for the caliber of consumer living in Las Vegas. If you guessed Red Box for the second question then you have an idea of the journalistic standards for the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Really?!?

…and she always smells like methylmethacrylate…

1. It is two words, methyl methacrylate.
2. Methyl methacrylate is actually a compound used to make plastics like plexiglas and PVC pipe. (It would make more sense for her dad, Mac, to smell like methyl methacrylate.)
3. The word she should have used is methyl acrylate which is “present in nail lacquer”.
4. Juno pronounces it “methyl methacralyte”. My chemistry knowledge is limited, but I don’t think there is such a thing. (Any chemist who wants to correct me, please do.)

IMDb avenger to the rescue!

Now that my world is shattered, I have to decide if I should quote the movie directly or corrected for the sake of science.

Dear Diablo Cody- Shame, shame.

The guy who wrote YouTube: An Insider’s Guide to Climbing the Charts offers this advice to Google. I hope they listen to him, because I sincerely believe in this medium as powerful up-and-coming mojo. It is Eudora of 1990, Mosaic in 1993, or PowWow in 1995. It is a forward-thinking technology that (sooner than later) will be widely used. It would be a shame to let it slip into another company’s hands.

Here’s a list of my favorite comedians and vloggers. Many of them skew young (college and high school) simply because they’re the ones who adopt online technology the quickest.

• Wheezy Waiter – A Chicago based former-waiter, current web-designer, and comedian. Be sure to catch Free Bagel Friday, his amazing time travel journeys, and his foul-mouthed coffee-drinking mother in the window.
• College Humor – Originally a juvenile outlet for takin’ it in the nuts, now a sketch group that along with…
• Barats and Bereta – …deliver the funny just as good as Andy Samberg’s The Lonely Island or Will Ferrell’s Funny or Die.
• Molly Lewis – A ukulele-playing songwriter who made the top views lists with songs about the future of MySpace, and a certain astronaut stalking naval officer. Now, she’s a top contender for Masters of Song Fu along with Hank Green, one of the…
• Vlog Brothers – Originally two brothers, one writer and one musician, using only YouTube to communicate for all of 2007, now they’ve expanded to include a nerd support community called “NerdFighters” that works to combat World Suck.

• Five Awesome Girls – Each taking a day of the week, five friends that met through YouTube and Harry Potter conventions, posted a video each weekday of 2008. Two of the girls (Kristen and Lauren) are popular Wizard Rock singer-songwriters…well, as popular as Wizard Rock bands can get.

…ahem…

The new Star Trek movie shows a spaceship being built in a canyon. Some of the geek elite complain because this is in conflict with the Trek canon. Since the film’s existence makes it part of the canon I won’t argue that, but some believe it doesn’t make sense to build a spaceship on the surface. I disagree for the following reasons:

• the energy cost of transporting materials, either raw or in prefab parts, from the planet are the same in toto or in pieces, so gravity’s costs is meaningless
• the OSHA requirements (and real safety concerns ;) ) for space workers would be complicated by an exponential factor

• technology advances that make spaceflight possible would make it possible to pull raw materials somewhere away from a/the planet, but the cost to move those to earth orbit would be outweighed

What do you think?

I begin to realize that I have never completed anything big in my life, mainly due to my lack of focus — too many interesting things to do at once. I know that I can finish something awesome and I have a list of potential activities. I would like you to help me pick that activity. Between now and my 40th birthday party (April 29, 2010) I will complete that task based on you input. Please, leave comments and suggestions. I will decide on March 29th, 2008 and update this page (and the Facebook event page) with my progress.

Being me, I’ve made a chart breaking down each task with three ratings: artistic/analytical/mechanical. (Ratings are 1-5 with 5 representing the most effort.)

This is the list of activities I will choose from:

• Learn Processing : 5/5/1 – Processing is a programming language applied to visual media mostly for art, but I think there will be a day that it will have commercial applications. I would like to create an installation quality presentation, and have it appear in a gallery. http://is.gd/kgTA

• Learn Accordion and/or Ukulele : 5/2/4 – I’ve started the beginning process of learning these instruments then I hit a wall (separate rhythms on each hand – accordion; tuned my baritone uke to standard – too lazy to restring).

• Write a novel/screenplay : 5/4/1 – I’ve got a dozen ideas for original novels, and half-dozen for “based-on” screenplays. (And if Brian Walters can write three novels that were published on Amazon…)

• Develop an iPod/iPhone game : 4/5/1 – I don’t know Objective C yet, and I’m not a very good artist, but I’m sure I can come up with a creative, progressively challenging game.

• Construct a DIY Bargain Studio : 1/3/5 – I’ve got about a dozen plans for building inexpensive camera/lighting rigs that would support my movie creation jones. http://is.gd/kh5N

• Learn R : 2/5/1 – Data analysis and metadata creation/design is a longtime love of mine. R is the new/applied SQL and could be a powerful career boost. – http://is.gd/UeB

• Learn Mashup (Music) Creation : 3/4/1 – I have a fairly broad (but simple) base of music theory including rhythm as of late. The mashup meme is old, but the style will probably live forever. http://is.gd/130K

• Create Independent Web 2.0 Site : 2/5/1 – I have a few ideas for expanding on the existing concepts of social computing, and with my knowledge in automation through programming I think I could do this well.

• Become a Vlog Personality : 3/3/2 – My obsession and inspiration of the Vlog Brothers and 5AG drives me to attempt my own YouTube channel. Do I have the charisma? Could I find a unique voice? Is my skin thick enough to survive flaming?

• Create Facebook Application(s) : 2/4/1 – I’ve already created two independent applications that I could rewrite for Facebook, and I believe FB will survive the social web flood. This also has the potential to change my career.

Ok…I’m ready for your input…try to be nice, though.

thegurglingcod:

I never entirely bought into the idea of blog years, but I’m not sure what else explains the nostalgia I feel for the pre-Tumblr era. At the risk of sounding as if I am pining for some discursive never-never land, like I was some Frankfurt School refugee who wound up beached on a Great Lake, the internets were smarter before Tumblr:

1) Reblogging — The ease of reblogging creates an echo chamber effect, and works to ossify conventional wisdom when it is still far more convention than wisdom. Rather than quoting and responding, it makes it possible to participate in the conversation in the same way that snapping indicates agreement among some sororities.The reblog without comment is a discursive action stripped of content, kind of like poking in Facebook.

2) The feed — unlike Bloglines or Google Reader, it all comes at you in a single torrent. I follow about 30 people, some of whom are rarely active, but returning to the computer after even a few hours feels like shoveling the driveway during a blizzard. At the same time, it is rewarding, as there is almost always something, when after five minutes of actual work at your computer, you crave distraction. It may be a dozen pictures of Strawberry Switchblade, scanned from mid 1980s issues of The Face or NME, posted by someone you keep meaning to unfollow, but there is almost always something. With regular RSS feeds, there is at least the ability to opt to look at what you want, when you want, but still keep track. It may be me, but Tumblr makes me feel more like a rat hitting that little bar over and over than the rest of the internet does.

3) Follow/unfollow — the social networking aspect always seemed like a distraction, and something that offered the limitations of both RSS feeds and social network, with few of the rewards of either.

So I plan to keep posting now and again, as it’s convenient for things that don’t really make sense on the blog, but I plan to unfollow on Tumblr, and then add some back as RSS feeds.

I imagine none of this is of much interest, but I’m wondering if I’m alone in feeling this way.

I concur with all of the Fesser’s points wholeheartedly (despite the inherent irony of my reblogging his anti-reblogging screed).

On a semi-related note, I find Twitter to be a hilarious distraction (both to read and to write). That said, I hate all these people who reply each other constantly. If you’re advancing the conversation with your reply, that’s one thing. But most of the time it’s just blah-blah-blah. Am I right or am I right?

I understand and support both sides of the issue on Prop 2 — an amendment to the City Charter banning tax incentives for multi-housing and multi-business development. It is poorly worded and will have a negative impact to the City Charter if it is passed. However, lately the COA City Council has shown a financial preference to big box retailers over local business, which translates into more money (and big money) going out-of-state in return for low-wage jobs. In the end I voted for Prop 2 for two reasons.

First, our Council members need to hear a clear message from the voters that we prefer “Keep Austin Weird” to convenient big box retail shopping. We can rely on the outlying suburb cities to keep us stocked in Best Buy, Michael Kors and Macy’s stores. Heck, since Bee Caves closed the Backyard to build a strip mall blight on the Hill Country landscape I think we can assume that they’ll be perfectly willing to destroy any city charm in favor of low-cost high-impact shopping. Second, the argument that expensive lawsuits will surely follow is flawed since the lawsuits will be cheaper then the cost of the tax incentives and economic impact.

Happy voting day everyone. If you’re in a swing state then good luck with your presidential candidate of choice. The rest of us need to focus on local concerns.

I miss Summer.